


Church on Sundays

by thymogenic



Category: Adam (2009), Charlie Countryman (2013), Hannibal Extended Universe - Fandom, Spacedogs - Fandom
Genre: First Meetings, M/M, Near Death Experiences, Strangers to Lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-27
Updated: 2018-09-27
Packaged: 2019-07-18 08:22:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16114553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thymogenic/pseuds/thymogenic
Summary: Will Nigel ever find the courage to speak to the angel he's been deliberately walking past every Sunday for two fucking years? Without so much as a glance in his direction, courage can be hard to come by.





	Church on Sundays

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Llewcie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Llewcie/gifts).



> HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY DEAREST LLEW!

There is a shrill, unremitting beeping, the kind of which comes from a little black box fronted with bright red angry numbers. Soon to follow, a groan, unable to drown it out.

A picture condenses in our poor, lovelorn fool’s mind, foggy, but thick and bright in the early light.

 _'Do angels groan at their alarm clocks?'_ Nigel wonders to himself. Whatever they do, it must be divine. _'A sigh. I bet it's a sigh...'_

His coarse hand pokes out from under his duvet, to bash around that fiendish beeping's side table, searching for a way to make it end. _Crash._ There goes some empty glasses and a bottle of aspirin. _Thud._ A fucking boot?  
He knows in his gut that angels most certainly do not have fucking boots on their side tables or empty glasses and that they simply sigh before succinctly turning off their morning alarms.

He shifts so that he can pop his head out. Hair mussed, and one eye closed, he peeps the time at eight o'two, as his hand finally finds the right switch.

Blessed quiet.

He sits up, gets out of bed, and hobbles to the bathroom sink. His head is killing him. He's got a new wound. Nausea threatens to empty him of any remnants of last night's indulgences. He smiles at himself in the mirror, anyway. Today is Sunday. Finally, it is Sunday. That's what all the drinking was for, it seems, week after week. Just to get to this day again and again. An angel awaits.

Now, for a piss, a smoke, a cursing at and a cleaning of the cut. Doggy shirt and leather jacket and pants and fucking boots and it is time to bounce on down the stairs. Oh it is Sunday! And he does not want to be late. Many a hungover Sunday afternoon have taught him to be early or he'll miss seeing his angel on the stoop. This angel is busy, got his own schedule, he does, and so Nigel must visit him accordingly, else he'll have to wait another week.

Proper angels are anything if not punctual, among other things, of course.

Nigel is finally out on the street and walking briskly down the sidewalk. His happy puffs of breath in the morning air blow past. His head still aches. But he does not care. It's Sunday morning and his angel is waiting for him. Bells toll off in the distance. But Nigel has got his own kind of church waiting for him, just two blocks away. He smiles and he keeps his hands warm in his jacket pockets and he briefly closes his eyes and thinks of all the other things that proper angels are.

They are of course beautiful. Quiet. Aloof. Focused. Technologically gifted. Unknowable. Untouchable.

More bells! It is fucking Sunday! And now just around the corner blissful service will begin!

He stops and looks around the edge of the brownstone two doors up from his angel's. He's there. A proper angel, bundled up in jackets and sweaters, and sitting on his cold stoop with his laptop, just like always. Properly fucking gorgeous. Aloof. Focused. Untouchable. Nigel's heart pounds as foolish hope rises within him. Maybe today, finally, maybe just maybe, it will be today that Nigel gets just a little bit more. A knowing glance? Maybe they'll meet eyes. _Holy fuck!_ Maybe his angel will even smile! ...say hi? _No, you fucking idiot, don't be greedy. A glance will be just fine._

After two years of walking by nearly every Sunday without any acknowledgment...

A glance would be fucking perfect.

 _Okay_. A breathe. A tidying of the hair and a straightening of the jacket. Beat. Then he's off around the corner.

Each step brings him closer. He tries not to walk too fast nor too slow. He looks at the NASA sticker on his angel's laptop to avoid staring at his face. Next, he looks around to change it up, but he's really got no interest in the other pedestrians or cars or the shaking of yellowed gingkos in the autumn breeze. Then, a bright idea materializes: He reaches into his pocket for his bronze zippo, the one he thinks sounds extra tinny, and 'accidently' drops it onto the concrete. The angel gives a reflexive glance his way. Nigel's eyes are already waiting. Their glances meet. _Holy shit - their glances meet!_ Nigel briefly looks down to pick up his lighter - he thinks this is less awkward. He looks back again. The angel is still looking. But he doesn't smile. The butterflies in Nigel's stomach start to dance anyway. Nigel realizes he is just standing and staring so he moves ahead, but looks back several times as he goes. The angel follows him with his eyes. Still no smile nor even a turning of the head.

In the end, Nigel looks back one last time to find the angel's eyes back on his screen.

It doesn't matter. He got eye contact. The angel did not seemed creeped out, either. Nigel keeps going all the way to the end of the street, before turning right to head back to his place, where he'll sleep off his hangover til the late afternoon. If he can get to sleep at all.  


_The angel looked back!_

+++

"Hey! Bou! _Asshole!"_

Nigel jerks up in his seat and the long pillar of ashes that had burnt almost to the filter of his cigarette dump into his lap. He curses as he tries to wipe them off, and grey powder smudges into dark fabric. He sits up and glares at Darko.

"Are you fucking listening? This is important." Darko says as he shakes his head. "What the fuck are you moping about? You've been out of it for weeks..."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah... Pick-up tomorrow at twelve. I got it!" He picks up a fresh smoke and lights it, flicking the cap of his zippo back into place with a ting. "And get off my fucking case. I got things on my mind."

"Like what? Not like you've got any kind of personal life, you fucking loser." Despite Darko's words, they come out laced in concern.

"Just shut the fuck up."

Another gaudy techno tune starts up as a waitress brings a fresh round of shots to their table. Pulsing lights illuminate the flirtatious smile that she flashes at Nigel. But he could give two shits. She's no angel, and his has been missing from the stoop for over two months.

Nigel was considering if he should even bother getting up to go to 'church' the next day after weeks of no-shows from the object of his affection. Maybe that fleeting meeting of eyes had finally weirded the angel out enough to change his habits in order to avoid fucking stalker Nigel. He knew somehow the time would come, but he didn't expect it to... To bother him like this. It brought out a dull ache in his gut to think that the only thing that managed to brighten his days was gone, just like that.

He knew he would never be good enough for his angel. But at least getting to walk by and glance at his beautiful face fueled his yearning fantasy that something could one day come to pass between them. No. Such pure and good things were never meant for the likes of him. Nigel lives with what he has always believed he deserved: Ingrained in solitude amongst the lawless New York underground, any prospect of companionship limited to those stuck down in the mire and the muck with him. Waitresses looking for the wrong kind of company in dodgey gangster clubs. Drug dealers and their victims and gunpowder and broken knuckles. Darko, who was happy to remain among them, keeping the only man he truly trusted around so he could continue his pathetic ambitions at being the big fish in a little pond. Pff! So what if he was the only supplier to the Romanian thugs this side of town? It would all end in blood or in a cold prison cell one day, anyways.

Nigel downs two shots in succession and slams the empty glasses down on the table. He smushes his cigarette into the ashtray and exhales with a cough, grabbing his jacket and standing to go. "I'll call you tomorrow to let you know what went down."

Darko throws his hands in the air. "Off to sulk in private you fucking baby?"

Nigel flips him the bird and exits out into the cold lonesome streets to find a taxi into the village and sulk in private. No church tomorrow, he decides. His heart can't take it.

+++

 _Beep beep beep_ goes the angry black box; its red digits scream, ' _Fuck you, its eight o'two!'_

Soon to follow, a groan, unable to drown it out - just like always?

 _'Do angels groan at their alarm clocks and fear their stoops?'_ Nigel wonders to himself.

Whatever they do, they might be scared.

He does not imagine what fearful images may run through their minds, for he may match them too closely.

His coarse hand pokes out from under his duvet, to bash around that fiendish beeping's side table, to make it end. _Crash._ There goes his hand into the lamp shade. _Thud._ His broken heart.

He knows in his gut that proper angels most certainly avoid shady characters lurking outside their domicle. It is only fitting that beautiful creatures should take caution.

He shifts so that he can pop his head out. Hair mussed, and one eye closed, he peeps the time, as his hand confusedly finds the right switch.

Had he set it before sleeping? He remembers thinking it entirely unnecessary. Perhaps in his drunken stupor he has simply hoped for that which will not come.

He sits up, gets out of bed, and hobbles to the bathroom sink. His head is killing him. He feels a hard scab on his knuckles, yet to fall off. Nausea threatens to empty him of any remnants of last night's attempts to forget everything. He frowns at himself in the mirror; an affirmation. Today is Sunday. So sad, that it is Sunday. That's what all the drinking was for it seems, week after week. Just to get to this day again and again. Even though an angel no longer awaits.

Now, for a piss, a smoke, and a picking at the wound. Doggy shirt and leather jacket and pants and fucking boots and it is time to plod on down the stairs. Because, in the end, what else would he do? Oh, it is Sunday... Does it matter if he is late? Many a hungover Sunday has seen this sad excursion to an empty stoop. Nigel is a masochist if nothing else. And the angel has wised up to all this, and acted accordingly.

Proper angels are anything if not leery, among other things, of course.

Nigel is finally out on the street and walking slowly down the sidewalk. His sour puffs of breath in the morning air blow past. His head still aches. But he does not care. It's Sunday morning and the memory of his angel is waiting. Bells toll off in the distance. But Nigel has got his own kind of church waiting for him, just two blocks away. Should he confess his sins? All the time in the world would not be sufficient to resurrect his angel. He frowns and keeps his hands warm in his jacket pockets (though it is of very little comfort) and he briefly closes his eyes and thinks of all the other things that proper angels are.

They are of course beautiful in memory. Silent. Gone. Aware. Unknowable. Untouchable.

More bells! It is fucking Sunday! And now just around the corner woeful service will begin!

He stops and looks around the edge of the brownstone two doors up from his angel's.

He's not there.

+++

_’Press one to listen to your inbox...' Beep... 'You have one new message...'_

_'....you mother fucker! Explain! He waited for three fucking hours....Ce pusca mea.... What the fuck.... Never would I have expected this - not from you!'_

Then, a long draw on a cigarette, and Nigel can just picture the remorseful frown etched into Darko's face.

Softer, now: _'Old friend, you know as well as I do that you'll have to be made an example of.... Don't make me send the boys to come get you.'_

Click.

+++

Nigel pulls his hand away from the gash in his side and finds it glimmering red in the late afternoon sun. He leans on the black wrought-iron gate in front of the angel's stoop, and smiles something small to himself. _'My angel would have been proud... I wish he could have seen..._ It's definitely not the time of day for the angel to be out, were he still in the habit and not probably avoiding Nigel, but Nigel is cut up and in need of something comforting.

Then, an elderly neighbor walking his dog stares too long as he walks by, and Nigel takes his cue to move on.

Not a damn thing in the universe could have prepared him for what happens next.

His full focus is snatched toward the small alleyway between the angel's brownstone and the next, when a clear and calm voice calls out, "Were you looking for me?" Nothing thunderous like the divine voices of biblical angels, but the sound hits Nigel like a fucking thunderclap, no less.  
Then, a shuffling of sneakers on concrete heralds the revelation of immaculate beauty, as Nigel's long absent angel moves out of the shadows to look straight into Nigel's shocked gaze.

Clumsily, Nigel points at himself in disbelief, too shell shocked to say a word.

"Can you come closer, please? I don't want my neighbors to see and ask questions. They already asked me too many questions this week."

Nigel obeys.

He limps closer, and the chiaroscuro of the narrow space envelops them both.

A small 'oh' pops out of the angel's mouth. Nigel can see the other man regarding the bruises and cuts on his face and hands, and he winces. He never would have wanted the stains of violence in his life shown to this angel, such stains of shameful sin that they are.

"Are you hurt, too?" the angel inquires.

'Too?'

At first, it was hard to make out against the angel's cream jumper, his eyes not yet adjusted to the shade of the alley, but now Nigel sees that his right arm is cast in plaster and resting in a sling. Also, there are yellowed remnants of bruising painted all along the same side of his face. Whatever violence was evidenced here, Nigel couldn't help but think it was of no detriment whatsoever to the other man's looks.

Things get quiet, and stay that way as they just stand there and look at the other. Then, the angel starts to fidget, tapping his olive corduroy slacks with his uninjured hand, shifting from foot to foot, until it seems he can't stand the silence any longer.

He stills and speaks: "My name is Adam. I've been watching you watch me for almost all of the Sundays that have gone by over the past twenty-seven months. I've been in the hospital for the last eight Sundays because a taxi almost killed me while I was walking to the park one evening... and... and I don't want to die without… to not even once be able to…” Adam seems on the cusp of revealing something important, his eyes taking on a sort of desperation, but he is holding back. He shakes his head and looks down at the floor. “Anyway… We could die any day, you know! This is a fact, but we hardly ever think of it, because, well, that can be terrible for your mental health, being fixated on mortality, that is… I never like to think about it because I can't handle the anxiety of it, but these past couple of months I had no choice. I was in critical condition the first seventy-two hours of my hospitalization. When I _could_ think of things besides the pain, all there was, was the thought that I could have died and...” Then, Adam looks at Nigel sadly, focusing on the lower half of his face. He sighs. “And the images of your face, especially your mouth, it is very attractive you know, and I thought a lot about what kissing your mouth might feel like all these months, especially the ones in the hospital… I don't want to miss my chance, now that I've survived, to know what kissing you would feel like."

The concrete melts away from under Nigel's feet. He's floating in stunned silence, revelling in the way he could now give title to the beauty that had bewitched him all this time, oh, dear Adam, and the way that Dear Adam had said the words 'kissing your mouth’, and he can't believe that this is all quite real. Doubt soon replaces surprise. “You - you want to - you mean you're not scared of me?”

Adam's brows scrunch together. “What? No? Why would you…” Adam steps forward hurriedly, just a couple of inches away from touching, like he doesn't want to waste another second on such insignificant topics and instead get to the real matter at hand, that of lips on lips at the not so subtle insistence of memento mori. He shifts his gaze to Nigel’s black dress shoes. "You come visit me because you find me attractive too, right? You wouldn't mind kissing me, right?" Now, he's looking up into Nigel's face, blue eyes clear, and searching for some sort of indication.

Nigel nods. He can't fucking believe this is real. He smiles and reaches his cleanest hand to his angel, gently, cautiously. Oh! Adam is God's gift to him that he never deserved but would nevertheless accept, and Adam takes it as consent as he desperately grasps at the lapels of Nigel's dark blazer and presses his lips up against his.

A gospel choir might as well be right behind them, belting out 'hallelujah!'

Nigel, frozen in reverence, does little else than allow himself to be kissed. He takes in the ethereal sensation of pink satin melting into him, and he closes his eyes to permit for total immersion into the feel of it. Each delicate, sensitive, nerve ending of his kissed flesh screams at his brain, _‘Holy fuck! This is really happening! And it is so soft! And beautiful! And righteous! And so fucking beyond what you always dreamt this might have been like!’_

Then, Nigel pulls back slightly for breath, panting, not from effort, but from thrill itself, and he can smell and taste and feel the creamy vanilla warmth of Adam’s breath intermingling with his own. Fucking delicious! Unbearably sweet! Bated breath replenished, he then sinks forward again to reciprocate the lush pressure of his mutual affection. He brings his hands up tenderly to cup Adam’s jaw, gently manipulating the angle of their faces every so often to allow for new ways of feeling friction and glide.

Soon, Adam tries for deeper contact, as he parts his lips and thrusts out his tongue, which makes Nigel’s grip on Adam’s face tighten as his eyelids flutter.

Adam pulls back abruptly.

Nigel panics. “Oh! Angel! I’m so sorry! Was I too rough? I can be gentle… I…”

Brows scrunch again. “No! No! I just…” And here he grasps back at Nigel’s face. “What’s your name? I don’t think I should continue putting my tongue in your mouth without knowing it. It doesn’t seem… appropriate.”

Nigel leans back into the brick and breaks into such a peal of laughter that the gash in his side stings anew, and he can feel a small rivulet of fresh blood soak into his shirt. He places his hand to it, and tries his best to just smile instead. “Proper angels are surely well-versed in matters of what is appropriate after all…” He chuckles and flinches. “Of course! We don’t want any unnamed tongue down our throats now do we?” He offers his left hand to shake in greeting, “My name is Nigel.”

“Nice to meet you, Nigel.” Adam hesitantly shakes back. “But are you not shaking with your right because of my cast?”

Nigel offers the bright red palm of the proper hand in answer, and Adam’s eyes go wide.

“If you would come upstairs, I have a first aid kit.” At this, Adam puts his free hand into his pant pocket and starts to leave. “Besides, Mr. Hopper keeps staring at us, and he really doesn’t like you, so we should finish kissing in my living room instead.”

This surprising statement brings Nigel’s attention to the sidewalk, where the elderly man with the dog from earlier is giving him the deadliest case of stink-eye he’s ever received this side of the Atlantic. He follows swiftly after Adam. “Jesus! What did I do to him?” They pass through the wrought iron in front of Adam’s stoop.

“He sees you hanging out by The Romana in Astoria when he goes to work at night. He says it’s full of drug dealers and thugs. He says that means you’re a bad guy and that I should call the police the next time you come to visit me. He says it every week…”

Just short of the building, Nigel stops dead in his tracks. “Mr. Hopper is right, Adam.” He takes a few steps back. “And although I cannot fathom how the words ‘finish’ and ‘kissing’ should ever appear in the same sentence in regards to you… I think I ought to just go home and fix myself up on my own.”

Adam watches him, unblinking, until he reaches the sidewalk proper. “Wait!” he calls, “It’s true, then? Is that why you’re hurt now? Because of illegal drugs?”

“Technically, yes.”

“What do you mean?”

“It happened because I decided to quit my involvement in the organization I was part of… I kind of ruined a big business deal by not showing up to an appointment, and my boss was none to pleased about it… So, my boss, uh, well, he had an example made of me.”

Adam strokes his cast, and asks, “So, you don’t want to participate in illegal drug activities anymore… could your boss have had you killed for that?”

Nigel nods and regards his hip wound. “He sure fucking tried.”

On swift feet, Adam goes to Nigel, and takes his bloody hand in a firm grip. “See! Memento mori! And it could have been today for you! Just like it was for me eight weeks ago. Please, come upstairs. We can continue kissing, and not say we’re finishing, once you’re closed up.”

Accepted. Cared for. Kissed and tended to. Forgiven. That’s apparently what drug dealing demons can be. “Amen to that, Angel. Amen to that.”

 

And just like that, Sunday services are back on schedule.


End file.
